But with the ever-quickening news cycle forgetting, if not forgiving, Trump’s past with every new presidential tweet, Trump has proved he doesn’t need journalists and can beat them at their own game.

Trump has become increasingly chatty with reporters, inviting them to watch Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation vote, having New York magazine sit down with him for a bizarre interview at the Resolute Desk, and holding what the news website Axios says have been more press conferences in the past month than in the previous year.

Recently even Fox News, often friendly to Trump, has stopped airing his rallies in full. But the West meeting and a freewheeling 80-minute press conference in September put Trump back in the driver’s seat of his media coverage.

Trump has recent successes to brag about, including Kavanaugh’s confirmation, an impressive number of lower-court judge appointments, and the renegotiation of NAFTA with Mexico and Canada on favorable terms for the US.

Behind those successes lies a mountain of public and media outrages dating back to his first day in office. The travel ban, the transgender military ban, the separation of families at the border, the sympathetic stance toward white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia, all spawned round-the-clock outraged superlatives on cable news.

But The Times’ epic 14,000-word tax takedown of Trump didn’t stay in the news for more than a day, and his approval rating has stayed close to 40% throughout his time in office. In fact, it has gone up over the past year:

“It wasn’t the timing of the Trump taxes story, its length, or the fact that it wasn’t cut up into bite-sized pieces that dampened impact,” The Times’ Glenn Thrush tweeted. “The great @ProPublica story on Trump/Abe is getting similar ‘we knew this.’ Trump overload/cynicism is a growing threat to good journalism.”

Perhaps journalists will one day find some mud that sticks to Trump. But given that he was elected president after boasting on tape of sexually assaulting women, it’s hard to imagine what that story could be.